In defense of hating Donald Trump
In high school I had one of those nominally Christian friends who thought of hatred as a sin. His technical workaround was that he never hated anyone but instead “disliked them intensely.” I didn’t assume I was smarter than God (if there was one) but I knew a semantic loophole if ever I saw it — and you could drive a carriage and six through his. I don’t know what satisfaction he got from asserting such rubbish but I’m going to give him enough retrospective credit for intelligence by suggesting it wasn’t much.
But the notion persists with some adults I know today, and I expect they are either just as insincere as my high school friend was or simply delusional. To paraphrase Dean Martin, everybody hates somebody sometime — unless you’re either catatonic or doing drugs. And no, hating the sin and loving the sinner won’t do either. Nobody, for example, loves someone who’s murdered someone close to them.
But it’s the height of arrogance or conceit or both to proclaim that you love and/or forgive someone who’s wronged a third party. The third party in question would be rightfully incensed at the notion, and would be correct in wondering exactly what kind of messianic delusions you are entertaining. It is precisely our compassion that differentiates those of us on the left of the political spectrum from those on the right. It is our compassion that compels us to hate. If we don’t hate the people who cause harm to others then we aren’t really compassionate at all, we’re just playing Jesus and wondering how we came off. I grew my beard to go with my unaccustomed long hair because I can’t get to a barber during the pandemic — and that is the only reason.
When it comes to hate and discord I’m all for it. We’ve got an implacable enemy out there, an enemy of ironfisted evil. Evil like that deserves nothing short of our very best hatred. Hatred is outrage in action, it’s what keeps us up at night fighting the good fight. Donald Trump won’t be defeated in November if we all melt into one giant morass of a smarmy puddle of love. We need to be stiff-spined, resolute and ready to fight. We need not only to vote but to get out the vote. We have to be just as motivated as I guarantee you they will be. We need to get mad, get even and be warriors.
So it’s important for us to remember who we’re dealing with. Donald Trump is a man who raped women and children. He is a man who whines about unfair treatment by the press and crows about how great he is while 142,064 Americans (as I write this) lie dead in their graves because of him. Trump is a guy who doesn’t care that his puppet master and friend Vladimir Putin is hiring Afghan mercenaries to murder American troops. Trump is a man who has abandoned and forgotten children in cages. Trump has repeatedly betrayed his country. So don’t talk to me about love and forgiveness. I have no room in my heart to love such a person, and it would be not just the pinnacle of arrogance for me to forgive him for the wrongs he committed against others, but a despicable act of injustice. It is our moral duty to hate Donald Trump.
Lest we also forget, we also have a planet to save. We have lost four precious years of progress in our battle against global warming because of this vile, stinking monster currently infesting the White House. Let’s get him out in November, let’s do it in overwhelming numbers, and let’s do it as an army that hates corruption and deceit and evil, not because we are full of false and insincere Christian charity, but because we are just and right and avenging. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.